Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss; Profile Books Ltd; Price: Rs.195; 209 pp It’s an eyesore to which my eye is unfailingly drawn every morning before I hunker down to the task of parsing, phrasing, dressing up and generally rendering EducationWorld intelligible to our half-a-million readers of whom at least one will hopefully do a Moses and lead the people of India out of the wilderness of dangerously levelled down neta-babu socialism. Prominently displayed in the premises of the office next door — professedly a fairly successful telecom equipment and services company — is the stern notice: Visitor’s entry only with permission. Initially this eye-catching sign provoked some amusement but the obstinacy with which this obvious error is adhered to is increasingly irritating and provokes alarmist explanations why Indian industry has a mere 0.6 percent of world trade. Maybe people abroad just don’t understand what our businessmen are talking about. But this particular grammatical bloomer has also served the useful purpose of being a daily reminder of the importance of punctuation in communications, especially given that those in the communications business (such as this reviewer) are (despite a legal system which is the pits) always vulnerable to writs of defamation. Of course one shouldn’t over-emphasise the importance of impeccable English punctuation in a heterogeneous, multi-cultural society in which half the population can barely read and write their names in any language. I often find myself keeling over with sheer gratitude if as editor of this newsmagazine I receive a paragraph which is intelligible, never mind the punctuation. But that is precisely the point that Lynne Truss, hitherto a not-so-successful novelist and broadcaster and now the celebrated author of this dark horse bestseller, wants to — and does — make. Improper punctuation can diabolically alter the intelligibility of a written sentence, as recounted in the apocryphal — but you never know — story encapsulated in the title of this engaging book. Which is to the effect that a panda (a large furry endangered animal found in the upper reaches of China) walks into a restaurant, orders dinner and having done, instead of paying the bill, draws a gun and fires away at the ceiling and crystal ware. “Why?” asks the bewildered maitre d’ as the panda heads for the exit. “I’m a panda. Look it up,” he says tossing him a badly punctuated wildlife manual. The waiter does so and comes across this entry: “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like animal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.” This clever punctuation joke about the perils of misjudged punctuation is the point of departure for a detailed investigation-cum-lament into abysmal standards of English grammar and punctuation, if at all it is taught, in the very home and epicentre of the English language. According to Truss until 1960, punctuation was routinely taught in British schools. Currently a recently introduced National Curriculum “ensures that when children are eight, they are drilled into the use of the comma, even if their understanding of grammar at such an early age is a bit hazy”. But during…
